Senate District 16 is Drawn to Benefit Incumbent
The borders of the proposed 16th Senate District is an embarrassingly blatant example of drawing a district for the benefit of an incumbent legislator and to the detriment of the constituents. My additional concern is that the problem will be smoothed over with a re-drawing of the obvious narrow protrusion that includes the Senator’s residence, but will fail to address the completely unnecessary splitting of Allentown. The successful support and advocacy for the city of Allentown, as a whole, impacts the surrounding region — the Lehigh Valley. Attaching a western section of Allentown to a district that stretches into Berks County, completely disregards any concern for serving this community of interest. The proposed “People’s Map” demonstrates that this split is avoidable..